There is in the human spirit a faculty which may properly be designated the God-sense. It is that interior organ on which God operates by the agency of the Holy Spirit; it is that part of our being which comes into immediate contact with Divine truth. There is a mysterious, indefinable link, connecting the soul with the body, where the brain and the mind are mysteriously connected; so there is a mysterious link in our spiritual being, where the Divine spirit and the human spirit join each other. And in like manner, as it is essential for the soul to be united to the body in order that the organs of the body shall live and perform their functions, so it is essential that the Divine spirit and the human spirit be united in order that the spiritual faculties be alive and perform their proper functions.  

All men have a latent Divine sense, just as dead men have the nerve and brain tissues; but these latent organs of man’s spirit must be made alive by the Divine spirit in regeneration and then purged, illuminated and intensified by the Divine spirit in sanctification. Hence we read in the Scriptures of being “alive from the dead,” of being “dead to sin and alive to God” and of being swift or “quick to hear,” having a “quick understanding.” When we speak of being alive to God, a great many fail to apprehend its true meaning. It signifies that our sense of Divine things is wide awake, active, acute; that we are intensely interested in God; that our soul is on the alert for Divine things; that our inward sensibilities are susceptible to the movements of God’s Spirit; that we feel keenly the penetration of Divine truth and that the five senses of the inner soul are as really awake to the facts of the spiritual world as our physical senses are to the ever-shifting panorama of the physical world.  

It was prophesied of Jesus that He should “be of quick understanding.” The original has it “keen-scented.” The illustration is from that of a quick-scented animal which is endowed with such acuteness of smell that it can detect the trail of a bird, or beast, or man, of which dull-scented creatures would be ignorant. All the spiritual faculties of Jesus were so pure and intense that He could detect the will of God; He could strike the trail of every truth and He could catch the vibration of far-off celestial voices of which other men around Him would be all unconscious.  

We have illustrations in every department of life of extraordinary acuteness of certain senses and perceptions in various directions. A mother can be so intensely alive to the voice of her babe, that she will hear its faint cry when other ears equally as good as hers would not hear it. It is said that one of the queens of Europe, amidst the gaiety and merriment of a royal feast, heard the cry of her child in a distant apartment of the palace, and unceremoniously bounded away to it, when no one else had heard the sound.  

Instances and illustrations could be multiplied along every pathway of life to prove the wonderful results of being keenly alive to certain things. To have the spiritual senses thus keenly alive to the person, the character, the Word and the work of God in Christ, is the greatest necessity in the moral universe. How few there are who look upon religion as a soul-sensitiveness to Divine things! The great bulk of religionists look upon religion as a sort of a humdrum of set forms and duties, and so many seem utterly incapable of grasping the true idea that the real Christian religion is a soullife, a heart-sense, a heavenly sensibility by which we feel the sweep of Divine things.  

To instance a few items: it is a sensitiveness to the Divine Person by which Christ is a reality and a personality not only as an intellectual conception but as One inwardly apprehended as such and felt to be such. When the heart is really sensitive to the God-head in Christ, it will very readily be sensitive to other Divine things and relations. The Word of God will then be really alive and apprehended as a living, spiritual force. When the soul is truly alive to God, the very reading of God’s Word will attract our attention; we will perceive its spiritual accuracy; we will feel its penetration in the heart, and be inwardly sensitive to its every expression.  

It is in such a state that the “Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword.” This sensitiveness to God will be manifested by the readiness with which we feel the convictions or monitions of the Spirit. Persons truly sensitive to God will frequently receive something resembling telegraphic dispatches through the Holy Spirit, respecting opportunities, privileges, daily duties, instantaneous promptings in times of emergency, quick and gentle flashes of what ought to be said or done in certain cases, or intimations which none could understand unless there were a union of the spiritual nerve with the Holy Ghost. Perhaps in no department of Christian life will this sensitiveness to Divine things be brought into more constant play and requisition than in the realm of that manifold and delicate network of providence which God has established over His children.  

While the great mass of professed Christians recognize a special providence, and in its more signal forms can detect the presence of God, yet it requires a thoroughly purified nature and quickness of spiritual discernment to perceive distinctly the presence of God in these minor forms of providence which surround us at every footstep of our journey.  

When the storms are abroad and the winds are very high, the trees or the rigging of a ship will make wild music which even dull ears will hear; but an Aeolian harp set in a window will respond to the softest motions of the air and make delightful music out of those gentler movements of the atmosphere which coarser substances could never do. In like manner when God’s providential tempests sweep across society, the great multitude will distinctly recognize the voice of God, but those whose hearts are finely strung in unison with the Spirit will feel the daily breathings of those gentler movements of God in providence. They will send forth sounds of praise or prayer and respond to the quiet movements of God where many others would perceive only a dead calm of daily routine.